Play It Again, Samson
by The Illustrious Crackpot
Summary: Art imitates life, which imitates art; and music is the greatest art of all. A collection of oneshots focusing on various characters and/or pairings, all inspired by song lyrics.
1. LazloXEdward: Bad Connection

**Play It Again, Samson**

(The Illustrious Crackpot)

_A/N: So I was making this wallpaper for LazloXEdward-Club on deviantART. And at the same time, due to my obscure taste in music, I was listening to a Bernadette Peters CD. And one particular lyric in one particular song really caught my attention—I heard it, and I immediately thought "That's Edward." And so I sat down and wrote this first drabble in a collection of multiple _Camp Lazlo_-related drabbles inspired by song lyrics. They will hopefully focus on a wide variety of characters, and hopefully not all of them will be pairing-oriented, though, considering the fact that a large percentage of all songs are love songs, we shall simply have to wait and see._

_Without further ado..._

"_I never thought I'd break  
I never thought you'd make me miss your face  
And make me ache  
To hear your voice..."  
—"I Never Thought I'd Break" (Peter Allen and Dean Pitchford; Bernadette Peters's "Sondheim, Etc., Etc.: The Rest Of It")_

Bad Connection

_Zelig, Woodrow. Zembrewski, Karen. Zlartifast, Bartimaeus. Zzabakov, Zackary._

Edward tiredly slammed the book shut, shuddering as the resultant tremor made his legs quiver, then slid off his chair and placed it back on the shelf. Three hours gone. _Three hours._

And still there was nobody listed in the entire phone book with the first name "Lazlo".

With a sigh, Edward oozed back into his seat, staring dully at the telephone hooked unassumingly on the wall across from him. It had been kind of stupid to look, anyway. He didn't even know the monkey's last name. Besides, the listing would've been under his parents' names, which he also didn't know. But that was, of course, assuming that Lazlo just _happened_ to live in the same county as him. Pah! He probably didn't even live in the same _state_. He wouldn't even have been surprised if Lazlo didn't even live in the same _country_.

All of a sudden, the phone rang, and Edward's head shot up, soon followed by the rest of his body as he scrambled out of the chair. _Maybe, just maybe_—but no, it stopped even before he got halfway across the room. Unwilling to believe it, he just stood there, staring, for a few moments more, a look of unsurpassed longing wavering across his face. Soon enough, though, his brow furrowed in an irritated glower and he slunk back to the chair once more, plunking himself down sullenly.

What was _wrong_ with him, anyway? It had only been one day since he'd returned home from camp, and already that morning he'd woken up imagining that he'd heard Lazlo's voice calling him enthusiastically to breakfast. During his entire trek to the kitchen, he'd kept whirling around defensively, as if sensing the monkey about to pounce on him, only to be greeted with an empty hallway. And now _this_, jumping to the phone like a lunatic on the off chance that, out of all of the billions of people in the world, _he_ was the one calling.

Edward shifted in his seat, forcefully turning himself so that he was facing away from the telephone. But still, he kept craning his neck around to glance at it, an action he wasn't even really aware of until he started to get an uncomfortable crick, at which point he punched himself in the forehead as punishment. This was beyond ridiculous. It was just lucky for him that he was all alone, with his brothers all in town and his parents still asleep upstairs; that way, he had no witnesses to his insane, ludicrous, _stupid_ behavior.

It wasn't like Lazlo would even know his phone number anyways. Of course he'd asked for it, just as he'd asked for everybody's addresses and phone numbers on the last day of camp, but he'd forcefully brushed Lazlo off, informing him that he'd sooner become pen pals with an axe murderer. And there was no way Lazlo could've gotten that information from anyone else, since he hadn't shared his phone number with _anyone_, not even the Dungs. The only way Lazlo could've found his number was if he'd stolen Edward's camp registration forms from Lumpus's office, but that place was such a horrendous disaster area that there was simply no way anyone would ever have been able to find one specific piece of paper in there.

And why did he _want_ Lazlo to call, anyway? That was the big question. He _hated_ Lazlo. He'd spent all of his time at Camp Kidney just trying to avoid the darn monkey—not that it'd worked. But now all he wanted was just to see Lazlo's face...hear his voice once more. If only...

The phone rang again.

It rang a second time, and Edward's heart leapt into his throat. But his optimism only lasted for a second. _There's no way it's him_, he reminded himself sternly, feeling his heart sink back down a little as he did so. _Don't go over there. You're NOT gonna answer that phone._

The phone kept ringing. Edward steeled himself.

But then he remembered that the answering machine was broken, and that his parents had told him the night before to listen for any important calls.

The phone just kept ringing, and extremely reluctantly, prepared for a horrendous letdown, Edward strode across the room and removed the receiver. "Hello?" he intoned dully.

"_Hi, is this the Peppy Pizza Place?"_ asked a chipper young voice, speaking so quickly that Edward had no time to answer—not that he could. _"Can you get me an extra-large pineapple pizza with pepperoni, olives, and—"_

"LAZLO?" Edward gasped.

There was a short pause, filled only by bursts of static, then followed by a cry of pure, unadulterated joy. _"EDWARD? Edward, izzat you?"_ The monkey laughed, a sound that made Edward think of liquid sunshine, and unbiddenly his knees began knocking against each other. _"Wow, talk about wrong numbers!"_

His voice was quivering, his hands were shaking, his tail was whipping from side to side like a happy dog's. "I—I—I've been waiting all morning for you to call!" Edward blurted out before he could stop himself.

Lazlo's tone was one of amazement, but still the delight never left it. _"You were? Really? You really mean it, Edward? You wanted me to call you?"_

Edward nodded vigorously, momentarily forgetting that Lazlo couldn't see him do so. Then, mortified, he reigned himself in, and when next he spoke, it was in a much calmer voice. "Yeah, Lazlo...yeah, I have," he responded simply. "So I could do THIS!"

And with a _slam!_ he hung up.

With that he fell backwards against the wall, leaning heavily against it, panting and sweating, but with a small smile curved up at the edge of his bill. And just as he'd expected, mere seconds later the phone rang again. Edward just closed his eyes, grin widening as he let the phone go for a few more moments, savoring the anticipation of hearing those sweet tones once more.


	2. RajXPatsy: Rational Thinking

_A/N: Personally, the song "Down To Earth" has always made me thought of the Raj-Patsy relationship, or, anyway, the Raj-Patsy relationship I've created in my mind. Not to mention that it's a great song in general._

"_She makes you wanna know her  
When you don't know what it's worth  
Now you really wanna show her  
How she's just so down to Earth—  
Via satellite"  
—"Down To Earth" (Barenaked Ladies; "Barenaked Ladies Are Men")_

Rational Thinking

Raj fidgeted slightly, trying to subtly soothe the cramp in his leg without actually getting up. He wanted to speak up, to say something, to interrupt somehow, but there was simply no way. She was talking too quickly, never once hesitating or even stumbling over her words, just rattling on and on as if she'd been talking since the beginning of time and wouldn't even be finished after the rest of the universe was over and done with.

"...and of course Lazlo will be already registered with the PTA by that point, so he'll have no problem getting our little Junior into a really good elementary school, you know, one of those big old private schools that give kids the BEST education they possibly can, and we'll be so proud of little Junior when we send him off to kindergarten, but then of course Lazlo will have to go home to our upper-middle-class mansion and take care of baby Juniorette while I go to work at the Veronica Doll Company, and..."

He wanted to get to know the enemy, he'd told Lazlo and Clam; it was a _tactical_ thing, a way he could get to understand girls by understanding a _particular_ girl, so he could use this knowledge as a weapon the next time he clashed with the female kind. So, obliged to help their friend overcome his neuroses, his cabinmates had vacated Jelly Cabin for the morning, leaving Raj alone in there with Patsy, the two of them sitting crosslegged on the floor while Patsy babbled on, gesturing airily with her hands and only occasionally making eye contact.

"...and then once Junior's out of college, he can take over from me as head of the company, while Juniorette will already be making a lot of money with her modeling career and supporting roles in various movies—oh, I'll bet she'll even have an Oscar to her name by then—and then with the kids' income supporting us, Lazlo and I won't have to spend much time working, so then we can retire, and happily live out the rest of our days in a villa by the seashore! And _that's_ my plan for the future, Raj."

The elephant blinked, slowly cocking his head to the side as Patsy smiled expectantly over at him. Suddenly he jumped in realization. She'd actually _finished?_

"You know, I didn't really want to come here at first, but you're actually a really good listener," Patsy was saying, rocking slowly back and forth in her seat. "It's like...it's like talking to one of the girls, you know? It's like I can tell you anything."

Raj's ears burned bright red, though he wasn't really sure why. "Ees—ees dat so?" he squeaked out nervously, tapping his fingers together. "Well, uhm, I dunno why I should give you dat impression..."

Patsy shrugged lightly, still smiling over at him. "It's 'cus you're really nice, and you're really good at keeping secrets. Probably 'cus you're so shy." He wondered fleetingly why she would think he was shy, but the moment passed when her eyes narrowed disapprovingly. "You _won't_ tell Lazlo about what I said, _right?_"

Raj shook his head emphatically, so roughly that his floppy trunk nearly smacked him in the face. Of _course_ not. But not for the reasons she was thinking of.

"Good," replied Patsy, relaxing visibly. She smoothed down her skirt, and Raj's fingers twitched involuntarily. The mongoose opened her mouth to continue speaking, then closed it, staring disconcertingly at him as if trying to look straight through his body at the wall behind him. "...Come to think of it, why _did_ you invite me over for a 'talk', anyway?"

Alarm bells went off like crazy in Raj's brain and he began to sweat furiously, going completely rigid as all color drained from his face. He couldn't tell her _that_. No, _no_, not the story he'd made up for Lazlo and Clam either! Oh, why hadn't he thought that far ahead, why hadn't he planned out his response in advance, figured out what to do?

"Er, well, um," he babbled, his mouth going on autopilot as his brain searched like mad for a response, "eh, w-well, ehm, dere you were, und, und I was thinkeeng, well, uh, 'w-w-why don't I know Patsy Smiles half so well as—half so well as I know de other Bean Scouts?' Und so...so, I decided, I decided I'd like to, well, ehm, you know...talk to you?" he finished weakly.

Too close to the truth. _Far_ too close. She was going to skewer him.

But all she said was "Oh". And then "Oh" _again_, blinking sharply and then suddenly looking at him as though she'd never seen him before.

"W-well, anyway," Raj cut in hurriedly, desperate to change the subject before she noticed the fire-engine red rushing back into his face, "don't you think...don't you think your plans mit Lazlo are a bit, um..._fanciful?_ Y-you know, not a lot of families turn out half so ideally as your, erm, 'dream family' seems to..."

He trailed off, pulling his knees up under his chin. He wasn't sure why he'd said that. In fact, now that he thought about it, he wondered why Patsy wasn't yet attacking him for daring to imply that her "future" with Lazlo could be anything less than perfect. She was being awfully quiet, too...

It wasn't until he felt the warm breath on his cheek that Raj realized with a terrified start how close the girl had gotten to him, her lithe body practically laying over his as she leaned to whisper huskily in his ear.

"Well, if I ever decide I want a slightly _less_ fanciful family life, I'll be sure to look you up."

She pulled back just far enough that she could look right into his wide, shocked eyes, and she giggled.


	3. Samson: String Theory

_A/N: And finally we get to a good, old-fashioned, non-romantic humorous drabble. Ah, Samson. You shall never cease to amuse._

"_Y'know, I bet if we unraveled that sucker  
__It'd roll all the way down to Fargo, North Dakota...  
_'_Cus it's the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota  
__I'm talkin' 'bout the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota"  
_—"The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota" ("Weird Al" Yankovic; "UHF: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack And Other Stuff")

String Theory

The shadow it cast under the afternoon sun was immense, _enormous_, completely engulfing the surrounding troop of Bean Scouts in an awe-inspiring ellipse of darkness. And they just stared up at it, fixated, finding it difficult even to _blink_ in the presence of this glorious monument.

"It's...it's _beautiful_, Slinkman," sniffled Scoutmaster Lumpus, wiping a tear from his eye.

The slug beside him nodded slowly, a dreamy smile stretched across his face. "Well, sir," he responded solemnly, "it _is_ the Biggest Ball of Twine in Fuzzy Fir County."

The Bean Scouts let out a sigh as they continued to gaze up at the majestic yellow sphere, towering at least fifty feet on top of its elegant glass stand. It was incredible. It was breathtaking. It was—

"All right, everybody!" Slinkman suddenly called out, clapping his hands together decisively. "Who wants some overpriced souvenirs from the gift shop?"

In a tidal wave of raucous cheers and shouts, the Beans stampeded over to the souvenir pavilion, leaving only a cloud of dust surrounding the Ball. Well, that and a few lingering figures.

"Wow..." murmured Samson, rooted to the spot as he kept on staring awedly at the Ball. It was a truly amazing object, a solid testament to the virtues of obsessive-compulsiveness, evident in the awesomely focused concentration it had to have taken in order to wind up _so much_ string, in such a _perfect_ sphere, with the criss-cross pattern of the individual threads so neat and orderly... The guinea pig found himself growing weak at the knees, and had to lean on the rope barrier surrounding the Ball for support. It was all just too much. It was too strong a symbol for every element of perfection and pristine-ness that Samson revered.

A bit farther off, the only other spectators still at the Ball nudged each other, sneering mischievously before approaching Samson.

"Y'know, it's kinda _funny_ how _attached_ Samson's gotten to this thing," began Dave masterfully, craning his long neck closer to Samson to make sure that the guinea pig could hear him.

"_Indeed_," replied Pingpong right on cue, raising his voice a little, "especially because of his—BALL PROBLEM!"

A split-second before Samson could realize what was going on, he was sharply struck in the head by two souvenir miniature balls of twine, sending him crashing to the ground as the loons ran away, laughing hysterically.

With a groan, the little guinea pig pushed himself off the ground, frantically brushing the dirt off his uniform. "_Jerks_," he muttered to no one in particular as he straightened his cap and turned to once more gaze lovingly up at the Ball of Twine.

But then he stopped.

Right at the base of the Ball's glass stand, trailing out slightly from the body of the Ball, was the tail end of a piece of string, obviously the last one that had been added onto the Ball before its architect had been committed to that asylum. Samson wouldn't have paid it any more than a passing glance if he hadn't noticed something, something that made his blood run cold and his fur puff up dramatically.

There was a _stray fiber_ at the end of the string.

This was not right. This just...just couldn't _be_. The Biggest Ball of Twine _couldn't_ have an imperfection as GLARING as _this_, this infinitesimally small, near-_invisible_ loose fiber that only Samson with his magnifying-glass-power lens prescription could have spotted.

As the initial shock slipped away from him, Samson glanced nervously from side to side. There was nobody around. So, ever so cautiously, he lifted up the edge of the rope barrier and crawled underneath, approaching the body of the Ball inch by painful inch. At last he was a mere hair's width away from the offending thread, feeling his hands grow clammy with anticipation. He licked his lips, thinking longingly of the inhaler stuffed in his back pocket. But there was no need to worry, he reminded himself as his fingers crept towards the tiny little fiber. All it would take was one quick pluck, and then he could just scamper back to the other side of the ropes, and nobody would be the wiser.

His thumb and forefinger closed around the fiber, and he gave a minuscule tug.

All of a sudden the glass stand began to shudder violently, vibrating horrendously from side to side. The Ball wobbled tenuously in its grasp, finally leaping fully out of the stand to smack heavily into the ground, slamming—of course—on top of Samson. The force of the impact was so strong, though, that the Ball bounced right back up again, only to crash down outside the ropes and begin rolling frantically down the hill as gravity took its course. The tiny fiber ripped off in Samson's flattened hand, but the end of the string also remained where it was, the end of an ever-longer trail of string marking out the route of the rapidly-unraveling Biggest Ball of Twine in Fuzzy Fir County.

Finally regaining some sensations in his nerve endings, Samson sprang to his feet, hoping desperately that no one had noticed.

The mob of angry-eyed tourists carrying pointy-looking pitchforks told him otherwise.

"Heh...aheheh..." Samson chuckled nervously, pulling at his necktie. "Eh...anybody need a piece of string?"


	4. Slinkman and Lumpus: Survival Skills

_A/N: Yes! Two simply-silly, non-pairing-infested drabbles in a row!_

_This one's only very loosely based on the lyric in question, but somewhere in here there's a reference to another line from the same song, so it's all good._

"_I always will remember  
_'_Twas a year ago November  
__I went out to hunt some deer  
__On a morning bright and clear  
__I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow:  
__Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow."  
_—"The Hunting Song" (Tom Lehrer; "Songs And More Songs By Tom Lehrer")

Survival Skills

For all the world, it sounded like there was a military skirmish going on inside the Kidney woods. Every other moment heard the _crack_ of gunfire, with flocks of birds zooming _screaming_ into the sky after every report. In light of this constant uninterrupted shooting, it should be no surprise to learn that there _were_, in fact, a whole platoon of Bean Scouts toting rifles in those woods...however, those same Scouts were also sprinting terrifiedly back to their cabins, their weapons forgotten on the forest floor, panic overwhelming even their natural attraction to dangerous objects. No, it wasn't the work of a troop of Beans that caused that constant gunfire...

"Wooooooooo hoo hoo _hoooo!_" hollered a very familiar bull moose, swinging his rifle around hard without ever relinquishing his hold on the trigger, causing a full arc of bulletholes to spring out of the trunk of a tree a few feet off. "THIS IS _GREAT!_ I'VE NEVER FELT SO **ALIVE!**"

The little yellow slug beside the Scoutmaster threw himself fully onto the ground, clutching the Bean Scout rulebook over his head as though that would protect him from the constant rain of buckshot. "S-sir, CONTROL yourself!" he sputtered before quickly retracting his eye stalks back into his head, just in time for a fresh bullet to lodge in the ground right where his left eye had been splayed a moment before. "This hunting excursion has been nothing but a DISASTER! All the Beans have already _run away_—and what made you think it was a good idea to be anywhere NEAR heavy artillery ANYWAY?"

His frantic pleas fell on deaf ears as Scoutmaster Lumpus just continued skipping merrily through the forest, squeezing the trigger randomly to helter-skelter rains of bullets upon the poor defenseless undergrowth. Slinkman was certain that any moment now the Scoutmaster was going to cause a brushfire.

"PLEASE, sir!" he tried crying out again, scrambling to his feet. The Scoutmaster was already quite some distance off, and Slinkman had to hurry after him, though not so quickly that he'd be back in range of the moose's weapon. "Calm down! Come back to the cabin, and I'll make you some hot cocoa or something, and we can—"

"And give up my primitive masculine _rituals_, Slinkman? NO WAY!" Twirling his gun in an oddly graceful manner, Lumpus caught the barrel of the rifle in his right palm and swung the butt of the weapon backwards, cracking it against a low-hanging tree limb just behind him. The impact was so sharp, and the limb so thin, that it broke off and fell to the ground. "It was in my way," he explained to a baffled Slinkman, who was crouching behind a nearby rock. Then Lumpus stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth (as if this would help him improve his atrocious aim) and, to Slinkman's horror, the moose balanced the barrel of the rifle on his shoulder, the business end of the gun pointing into the woods behind him. "Now watch me sink this backward shot, Slinkman!"

Before the slug could protest, Lumpus squeezed the trigger with his thumb, and with a _crack!_ the rifle went off again, jittering the Scoutmaster up and down with the weapon's recoil. And before the slug could try to protest _again_, there came a sound as if of a sharp pencil being driven into a pillow, followed by a blood-curdling scream of pain.

"Y'hear that, Slinky?" crowed Lumpus cheerfully, completely oblivious to the ashen complexion of his companion, _or_ of the crashing of underbrush behind him. "I'll betcha ANYTHING I bagged a purebred Gurnsey cow with THAT one!"

Before anyone could explain the fallacies in the idea of finding a Gurnsey cow in the middle of a forest many miles from civilization, a thick, beefy fist clamped down on Lumpus's gangly neck and hoisted him roughly into the air, spinning him around until he was face-to-face with his attacker.

Or, rather, face-to-_flared nostrils._

"Oh, er, hello, Commander Hoo-Ha," gulped Lumpus nervously, trying very hard to smile pleasantly despite the boiling rage contorted on the bison's face. "Heh heh, um, fancy meeting you here..."

Never once breaking eye contact with the moose, Hoo-Ha thrust his free hand down to his side and tore at something with a violent ripping noise. Then the hand shot right back up to Lumpus's level, and, though it took a while for the nervous moose's eyes to focus on it, he wheezed at what he saw.

It was a pair of pants. More specifically, it was the pair of army-green pants that Commander Hoo-Ha had been wearing up until a mere moment before. Even more specifically, it was a pair of army-green pants that had a thin, circular hole in the seat, flanked on all sides by microscopic specks of powder burn.

"The pants can come out of your salary," hissed Hoo-Ha dangerously as he flung the garments to the side, then, bringing his free hand back up, compacting the digits into one terrifying fist. "But as for the _rest_ of it..."

Slinkman flinched, then finally had to dive for cover behind his rock again, which rocked tumultuously with the force of the severe punishment going on just ten feet away. The slug sighed. Well, when Nurse Leslie was done with him, that would _certainly_ teach the moose not to go on any "hunting trips" _ever again_.

Or until the next week, whichever came first.


End file.
